A Hero's Duty
by Razzmatazzy
Summary: Cloti oneshot, post AC. No smut. Dangerous levels of comedy. Cloud and Tifa took a vacation in Costa Del Sol, and it's up to Cloud to save her from the cockroaches that are so abundant there...


(Author's Note: This was written when I got bored one day and was rifling through my stock of Cloti fanart (heehee) and decided to write the story behind one of these pictures. This is the picture I wrote for: . I had a lot of fun and it's definitely hilarious. Please feel free to comment and enjoy!)

**A Hero's Duty**

The brochure said nothing about this, Cloud thought as he frantically whacked at roaches with a tattered newspaper while Tifa clawed her way up his back to scream in his ear and simultaneously choke him to death.

The long and well-earned vacation had started out well enough. It'd been a while since either of them had been to Costa Del Sol and he didn't mind a little relaxation after the Remnant ordeal a few months ago. Tifa had been curiously adamant on not bringing the kids along and he wondered at her motive for a while before he discovered what it was one night. The vacation had gotten markedly better since then and he found he was honestly enjoying himself. There were no demons of the past to thwart, no monsters to be wary of, no guilt to ease, no diseases to hide. It was perfectly peaceful, and he relished it.

Thus, when he got out of bed and shuffled to the kitchen to get some coffee, he was totally unprepared for Tifa's heart-rending shriek of terror. Ignoring the broken splinters of coffee cup in his foot, he'd dashed into the sunroom where he found Tifa standing on a wicker chair, wringing her hands in panic.

Shortly after that, he discovered what had caused her reaction. Several big, brown cockroaches had scuttled out of what appeared to be an abandoned bird feeder, probably left by the previous tenants of the suite. Snatching up the nearest weapon available - a newspaper three days old - Cloud had set upon the roaches with grim determination.

The only problem was that the newspaper seemed to be having very little effect on the bugs. He'd been thwacking at them for a good five minutes now and had only managed to kill one. Tifa wasn't of any help, merely pointing at any roach that came too close to her chair for him to target, during which time her screaming changed in tone and intensity.

At some point, a roach must have evaded Cloud's staunch protection of Tifa and had clambered up her chair and skittered across her foot. This resulted in Tifa rapidly abandoning her chair with impressive speed and dexterity and she landed on Cloud instead. Now Cloud had to take out half a dozen roaches with Tifa latched onto his back and her arms around his throat which was steadily making breathing a problem.

After much cursing, jumping, stumbling and whacking, Cloud had finally manged to defeat all the roaches. He gratefully pulled deep droughts of air into his lungs as Tifa slid off his back, and blinked away the spots that had begun to appear in his vision.

"Did you get them all?" Tifa said meekly. Her voice was a little a hoarse; no surprise with all that screaming.

"Yeah," he panted, still trying to catch is breath. He jumped, startled, when Tifa suddenly flung her arms around him and squeezed her gratefulness to him. For the second time that morning, Cloud experienced the unpleasant sensation of being unable to breathe. Then she pulled his head around and gave him such a kiss that he quite forgot about such trivial things as breathing.

"Thank you, Cloud," she said, smiling demurely. "My hero, always saving me just when I need it."

He smiled, feeling a little proud. "It's my job," he said.

"And you do it so well." Tifa assured him and kissed him again, which he considered a well-earned reward - those roaches had been a lot of work to kill, and he wasn't even out of his pajamas yet! Damn right, he deserved some flattery.

Finally, Tifa relinquished him and went to retrieve a broom to deal with the dead roaches and broken birdfeeder while Cloud went to pick ceramic splinters out of his foot and find a new coffee mug.

He had just finished cleaning up the broken mug and was pouring himself a generous amount of the delectable brew when he heard another scream from the sunroom. Thinking something else had befallen her, he ran to the sunroom only to meet a panicked Tifa in the hallway just as she left the room with impressive alacrity. She immediately shuffled behind him and peered over his shoulder in terror.

"What is it?" he demanded. Despite his attempts to move her, she kept him between herself and whatever she'd fled. "Tifa?"

Then he saw it - a very big and very hairy spider emerged from the sunroom, pausing in the hallway as if sensing his scrutiny.

"Kill it!" Tifa squeaked.

Cloud looked at the spider, then to Tifa, then back to the approaching spider. He chuckled. He couldn't help it - here was a woman that had faced monsters and aliens and madness, met each horrific creature without flinching and saved the world twice: And she was cowering behind him because of a spider. "You can't seriously be afraid of roaches [i]_and[/i]_ spiders?" he asked, beginning to think he was being had. One phobia he could understand, but two?

"YES!" Tifa squealed in terror and frantically clawed her way up his back for the second time that day. "KILL IT!"

The spider stopped a few feet from the them, waving two forelegs in the air threateningly.

Cloud eyed it warily. "Shit..." he muttered, taking a step back.

It could just be Tifa making him nervous, but... the damn thing was beginning to freak him out too!


End file.
